Any advanadage of the VA over Medicare and supplemental medical insurance coverage?

[rayg]

Sounds the same as me unless the %10 disability gets you some more of a cost advantage to you. You might want to check on that, Ray

[Dan In Indiana]

10% here, and no other insurance. Was hard to get anything after getting some hearing aids [too close to a bomb dump going up Tet] and the primary doc at my 1st CBOC was a joke, but when we got one right here in town, I transferred real quick. He has got me a bunch of tests at the hospital in Indy, that the other doc just passed on. Several colonoscopys', skin cancers taken out, one hand surgery and waiting on the other hand, and in the process of going back to ENT to try and get my sinuses reamed out as they are swollen damn near shut, and has two polyps in them. Good primary doc [remembers to note the hospital of when my hunting outings occur] that works to get me in for what I ask for, says that is his primary job now that he transferred down from the rat race at Indy. If I have an 0800 at the CBOC, he'll show up in sweats as he runs of a morning at the fairgrounds across the street. All I have ever had to pay so far is for meds. The wait time to get things really done at Indy is pretty bad as they are under staffed big time [full of IU School of Medicine students], under equipped, and under funded. Getting worse as I read there is now a big influx of Vietnam Vets just now getting in the system. Get one of those Colon tests where you take the Popsicle stick and do the 3 day wipe thing any time I ask for it. If I can ever get rid of this bad Sinus problem and start breathing good again, I may start going down to the fair grounds and run with him.

[RED]

there is no advantage for me with my ranking to go to the VA's financially and location wise. Unless exempt, you must go to all the VA facilities for care and not your own doctors or testing locations. If you do, you use your own insurance anyway. The VA charges your insurance also. The only advantage I see is if I were to drop my supplement and go to the VA but should I end up in an non VA emergency medical facility I would have to cover any expense Medicare does not cover which if serious could cover a lot of supplement payments. Also The VA charges co-pay $15

It all depends on your VA facility and how you are put into the system. The local American Legion helped me. I also have a hearing loss that was documented in my exit physical back in 1973. I lost my health coverage when my wife was forced to retire. To keep it in force, the premiums would have been over $700/month. I signed up for Medicare and bought a supplement policy. What I found was I can get care at the VA including hearing aids, eyeglasses, emergency room services from the VA and at very modest prices.

I also found the VA would bill my supplement and they would pay $4 here $7 there and when you added it up at the end of the month, that would total out at about $25. Meanwhile I was paying $125 a month for the Humana supplement. I did that for 12 months and found out that if I didn’t have the supplement, my VA charges would remain the same. In other words I paid out $1500 so the VA could collect $300 from them. I dropped my Medicare supplement and my VA charges have remained the same… Potentially A BIG MISTAKE.

Once you sign up for the supplemental policy and then drop it, you can never get it back. At that point the so called “open enrollment” period does not apply to you.

I do not pay $50 per visit nor do I pay a $15 copay and do not know why you have to. My copay for RX meds is $8/month/med.

One final thought. The care I get at the VA is not really very good. I see a Nurse Practitioner instead of an MD and she is great. I spent 4 days in the VA hospital with a severe bronchial infection. The facility was great, the nurses were outstanding but the Dr.'s were awful. Even the nurses were laughing at them and called them "baby docs." The oldest one looked like he was too young to buy a beer at the tavern. One "Dr." would say one thing then another would say the opposite 20 minutes later.